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Lavallee, who has targeted many Scottish events, including the forthcoming Kings of Leon gigs at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro, told us that he does not use “botnet” technology to harvest tickets and believes he breaks no laws.

The multi-millionaire said: “We have contracts with venues that allow us to buy certain allotments in exchange for a yearly fee, so we reduce their risk in case they can’t attract the big acts.”

The Record confronted Lavallee after he offered 350 Take That tickets for the O2 Arena in London at £777 each before the public sale even started for the gigs next June.

When we put his claims to the SSE Hydro, they denied point blank any such arrangement.

A spokeswoman added: “The venue does not place any of its inventory on to the secondary ticketing market.”

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A spokesman for the O2 Arena refused to say if the venue had given Lavallee the massive cache of Take That tickets. He said the claims were being investigated, adding: “Annual membership of the O2’s VIP Club allows small businesses, corporate clients and individuals the right to buy a limited number of tickets for shows of their choosing throughout the year.

“Within the terms and conditions of the VIP Club licence, the resale of tickets is not permitted.”

Trying to explain the price of the tickets he offers, Lavallee said: “Even if we buy a ticket at £100, maybe, when you factor in our yearly contract paid to the venues, that ticket comes up to £160.

“So that guarantees us tickets but it also ups significantly the price we pay.

“Most outsiders never factor in those costs… We will always look like the bad guys.”

He added: “Allocation can come from the promoter, venue, etc, many sources.”

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The Take That 25th Anniversary Tour gigs in London sold out in just three minutes. The band will also play the SSE Hydro.

We told earlier how touts made £1million from Justin Bieber’s recent gigs at the Glasgow venue.

The Record understands Lavallee, who claims to employ 20 computer-savvy and deft-fingered staff, will have his operations raised at a meeting of Westminster’s culture, media and sport committee next week.

MPs will grill industry experts as they consider new laws to ban aggressive computer software used by many touts.

Adam Webb, of pressure group FanFair Alliance, told the Record they were already compiling a dossier on Lavallee’s operations. But they were unaware of his claims to have secret deals with big venues for pre-sale tickets.

Millionaire Lavellee

Webb said: “Music fans will be horrified to hear this.

“This investigation offers a rare insight into the murky world of professionalised online ticket touting.”

Webb said StubHub’s decision to publish details on powersellers helped shed light on the grand scale of the problem.

He said: “As well as the 350 tickets listed for four Take That shows, Lavallee had similar volumes for The Weeknd, as well as Craig David, Phil Collins, Kaiser Chiefs and many others.

“Here was a guy based thousands of miles away, hoovering up hundreds if not thousands of tickets for UK events, and then reselling them at a profit back to British fans.

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“Because of a complete lack of transparency in the resale market, we don’t know if Julien Lavallee is a one-off rogue trader or the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”

A StubHub spokesman said: “As a marketplace, we don’t own any tickets listed on the site.

“We also do not have any direct allocations from venues or promoters – other than where a venue or promoter use our site to distribute tickets at face value.”

THE Record investigated Julien Lavallee after learning that he was holding an extraordinary number of pre-sale tickets for Take That’s tour.

Take That

The band offered a pre-sale deal to fan club members and those who bought their album a day before the bulk of the tickets were listed on Ticketmaster.

Yet Lavallee listed 350 tickets for London’s 02 Arena on StubHub for £777 each on the pre-sale day – which would make him a profit of more than £200,000.

Even at £250, which tickets settled down to after the public sale went live, his profits would be £50,000, with StubHub bagging another £10,000 from fans in commission.

In line with the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which was introduced to make touts’ operations more transparent, Lavallee’s listings included details of his business name, I Want Tickets, and his address.

After we confronted the O2 Arena with Lavallee’s claims, those details were removed.

The exact same seats that were offered by Lavallee’s company were still on sale on StubHub yesterday. That means Lavallee or StubHub either removed his personal details – breaking the law – or another buyer bought the tickets from Lavallee and relisted them at a huge loss.